Jeff Adair: Speaking out about an African atrocity

Jeff Adair

Saturday

Feb 23, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 23, 2008 at 10:22 PM

He can't get respect at home, where many people can't wait for the credits to role on his eight-year presidency, but in Africa last week, folks were showing President George W. Bush the love. In Tanzania, women dressed in commemorative outfits, full-length dresses with mug shots of our president all over them.

He can't get respect at home, where many people can't wait for the credits to role on his eight-year presidency, but in Africa last week, folks were showing President George W. Bush the love. In Tanzania, women dressed in commemorative outfits, full-length dresses with mug shots of our president all over them.

Bush, who is said to have done more for Africa than any U.S. president, tripling foreign aid to more than $4 billion a year and allocating $15 billion to fight HIV/AIDS, spent six days visiting five nations to spotlight America's efforts to fight poverty and disease.

And while the tour focused on the accomplishments, Africa continues to be plagued with problems, caused in part by poverty, territorial conflicts, corrupt governments, and, experts say, the destabilizing effects of colonialism.

Recently, I got a chance to hear a victim of one African atrocity, Grace Akallo, the subject of the 2007 book "Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children."

A soft-spoken, 27-year-old, recent Gordon College graduate in the process of applying to law school, Akallo spoke to a small group about her trials and tribulations, after being abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army.

At the time, back in October of 1996, Akallo was 15, a freshman at a Catholic boarding school. She was taken along with 139 classmates but most were let go after the school's headmistress followed the soldiers into the bush, and begged the rebels for their release. The soldiers kept 30, and took them to their home base in southern Sudan.

Like 30,000 abducted over the past two decades by the LRA under Joseph Kony's rule, some were made soldiers and others sex slaves. Akallo was forced to be a killer - kill or be killed were her only choices. Escapees were beaten with sticks, had their ears or noses sliced off, or were stabbed.

Akallo was beaten and abused. At one point, she was buried in a shallow grave. She spent seven months in captivity before escaping. To learn more about the horror in Uganda, check out this multimedia piece done in 2005 at: www.latimes.com/uganda.

It's a shocking story, but Akallo stressed her purpose in retelling wasn't to make us feel depressed or have nightmares. She simply wanted to make us informed, so that we could take action, write Congress, sponsor a child, or take other steps.

To me, the most unbelievable aspect of her story is how Akallo seemingly holds no remorse. A Christian, she told the 35 or so at the Worcester (Mass.) Public Library she felt her experience was part of God's plan. She in essence went through the ordeal to become an advocate for those who are still suffering.

Most U.S. reports about Africa are about suffering, be it Rwanda, Darfur, or Uganda. I'm sure compassion fatigue has hit many of us. We say we would help if we could. But there's so much to worry about right here at home.

There's the stress of making ends meet in a rocky economy, caring for our kids, our parents, and helping or contributing money to local causes there's just too much. It's impossible to pay attention, or make a difference, on issues thousands of miles away, we say. So we simply shake our heads, say "too bad," and move on.

Hey, I'm often in that camp, too. But at the same time, I understand Akallo's appeal, that as members of the human race our hearts should tell us that we cannot sit idly by, doing nothing in the face of evil.

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

More poignantly, I recall German anti-Nazi theologian Martin Neimoller's famous poem:

" First they came for the Jews

"And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

"Then they came for the Communists

"And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist...

"Then they came for me

"And there was no one left to speak out for me."

Jeff Adair is a Daily News writer and editor. He can be reached at jadair@cnc.com.

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